Peter Peyser, Legislator Who Defied the G.O.P., Dies at 93

Peter A. Peyser, in 1979. He served three terms in the House of Representatives as a Republican and two terms as a Democrat.CreditGeorge Tames/The New York Times

Peter A. Peyser, who rose from mayor of a Westchester County village to Congress, then defied the leadership of his Republican Party by quixotically challenging Senator James L. Buckley of New York in a 1976 primary, died on Thursday at his home in Irvington, N.Y. He was 93.

The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, his son Peter said.

As expected, Mr. Buckley swamped Mr. Peyser, who then switched to the Democratic Party and again won election to the House of Representatives. He served three terms as a Republican, from 1971 to 1977, and two as a Democrat, from 1979 to 1983, representing districts that included parts of Westchester and Rockland Counties and the Bronx.

He had previously been mayor of Irvington, N.Y., which had a population of around 5,000. First elected in 1962, he was paid $100 a month and kept his job as an insurance executive in New York.

But Mr. Peyser spent three-quarters of his time being mayor, he told The Hudson Independent, a monthly newspaper, in a 2009 interview. He raised taxes each of his eight years in office and built a new firehouse, enlarged a park and started a recreation program.

In 1969 he decided to run for Congress. Entering the 1970 primary, Mr. Peyser defeated three Republicans and then beat William Dretzin, a Democrat, in the general election.

In Congress, he worked to broaden the student loan program, modernize pension plans and increase aid to education. He was one of the last members of the New York congressional delegation to call for President Richard M. Nixon’s impeachment. In his 1970 campaign, he had cast himself as a Nixon loyalist.

Senator Buckley had been elected in 1970 as a Conservative Party candidate but had also drawn the support of the Republican Party when Mr. Peyser decided to challenge his bid for re-election.

In the primary campaign he made an issue of Mr. Buckley’s hard line against federal aid for New York City during its fiscal crisis, and he criticized the senator as a carpetbagger from Connecticut, where Mr. Buckley, the older brother of the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., had a home in addition to an apartment in New York. He also said that Mr. Buckley had regularly voted to help oil companies, one of which his family owned.

Mr. Peyser, who cast himself as a moderate running against an archconservative, could not persuade 25 percent of the Republican State Committee to support his candidacy, so he had to collect 20,000 signatures to get on the ballot. His family and largely unpaid volunteers gathered 27,602, of which 24,649 were ruled valid.

He still trailed badly in funds and the polls, but hoped he might get the support of Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, the former governor of New York. While he was mayor of Irvington in 1968, he had written letters in praise of Mr. Rockefeller, then a presidential candidate, and sent them to every delegate at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. Mr. Rockefeller and his family, in turn, contributed to Mr. Peyser’s campaigns.

“Peyser is a damn good man,” The New York Times quoted Mr. Rockefeller as saying in what it termed “a further elbow in the Buckley ribs.”

But Mr. Rockefeller gave his tacit support to Mr. Buckley in exchange for the senator’s promise not to endorse Ronald Reagan’s challenge to President Gerald R. Ford, whom the Republicans ended up nominating.

Mr. Buckley won by a 3-to-1 ratio but was defeated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the general election.

In early 1977, Mr. Peyser announced that he was switching to the Democratic Party. Gov. Hugh L. Carey, a Democrat, nominated him to be chairman of the New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates the state’s electric, gas, water and telecommunications industries. But the Republican-controlled State Senate rejected him, saying he had no experience in the field. He countered that he was a proven manager who could supervise technicians. He attributed the defeat to partisan politics.

Mr. Peyser then ran for Congress as a Democrat in 1978 and won. He was re-elected two years later. His most noted battles were his efforts, only partly successful, to cut agricultural subsidies to big farmers.

In 1982, Mr. Peyser ran against Benjamin A. Gilman, a Republican, in a district that had been redrawn. Many more of the voters were in Mr. Gilman’s old district than in Mr. Peyser’s, and Mr. Gilman won easily.

Peter A. Peyser — the middle initial does not stand for anything — was born in Cedarhurst, on Long Island, on Sept. 7, 1921, and grew up there and in Manhattan. He attended Colgate University, where he majored in classical Greek and competed in hockey and tennis and was an intramural boxing champion. He graduated in 1943 in a program that had been accelerated to produce soldiers for World War II.

Mr. Peyser enlisted in the Army and served in the infantry in Europe, where he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was awarded several decorations, including the Bronze Star. After the war, as a captain, he commanded the National Guard infantry company stationed in the Yonkers Armory.

Besides his son Peter, Mr. Peyser is survived by his wife, the former Marguerite Richards; his daughters, Penny Peyser and Safi Abheeti; two other sons, James and Thomas; and five grandchildren.

Mr. Peyser told The Hudson Independent that he had loved being mayor, “chasing fires” and responding to unusual challenges. One night a police officer called to report that five teenage boys and girls were swimming nude in the reservoir.

“Now that’s a real problem,” he remembered saying. “I suggest you tell them to put their clothes on and go home.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B16 of the New York edition with the headline: Peter Peyser, 93, Legislator Who Defied the G.O.P.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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